If you are a South African living in Australia or New Zealand, you are ahead of South Africa by six to ten hours depending on where you are. That time difference rules out a lot of options for connecting with people back home during reasonable hours – but it creates one that is genuinely convenient: when your workday ends in the afternoon, it is still morning in South Africa.
A session at 08:30 or 09:00 South African time is 16:30 or 17:00 in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. It is 14:30 or 15:00 in Perth. It is 18:30 in Auckland. These are times that work – after work, before the evening, in your own home or a quiet private space. No commute to an office. No waiting room. No need to explain to a local therapist what braai culture, load-shedding anxiety or the complexity of leaving South Africa actually means.
Australia has one of the largest and most established South African communities in the world. From Perth and its particularly strong South African presence, to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide – South Africans are woven into Australian life in a way that can make the experience of emigration feel both easier and more disorienting than expected.
Easier, because the country is English-speaking, relatively familiar in culture, and outdoors-oriented in ways that feel like home. More disorienting, because “almost the same” is sometimes harder to navigate than clearly different. The things that do not translate – the South African directness, the specific humour, the weight of what was left behind – can feel smaller and harder to name than they would in a more obviously foreign country.
The specific grief of leaving a country you love and feared at the same time
Navigating identity in a country that feels familiar but is not home
Relationship strain – between partners adjusting at different speeds, or with family in South Africa
The hypervigilance around safety that often persists long after the original threat is removed
Career stress in a competitive environment with different professional norms
The loneliness that can exist inside a busy, functional life abroad
Perth has a disproportionately large South African population and a culture that has absorbed South African influence significantly. The irony is that this can make things both better and harder: there is community, there are South African shops and churches and braai spots, but there is also a version of South Africa that has been frozen at the point of departure. Working through the experience of emigration with a counsellor who is still in South Africa – and can offer a perspective from the inside, not the preserved memory of it – is something Perth-based clients often find distinctly useful.
New Zealand has attracted significant South African emigration, particularly from families seeking a quieter pace, better safety, and a more secure future for children. The country is stunning, the people are warm, and the adjustment can still be surprisingly hard.
New Zealand sits ten hours ahead of South Africa, which makes it the most time zone-challenging of the common South African emigration destinations. But a session at 08:00 SAST is 18:00 NZST – still within the evening and accessible after a working day. We can find a time that works.
The distance – New Zealand is further from South Africa than almost anywhere, and that distance is felt
Adjustment to a culture that is warm but takes time to penetrate beyond surface friendliness
The particular complexity of raising children who are becoming New Zealanders while parents remain South African in their bones
Grief and anxiety that was brought across and has not yet been addressed
The sense of having made the right decision and still being sad – which is hard to explain to people who stayed
My focus is trauma, anxiety and depression – and for South Africans who have emigrated, these three things often show up together in ways that are not always named clearly. The grief of leaving is real. The residual anxiety that came with life in South Africa does not disappear when you board the plane. And the low-level depression of building a life that is functional but not yet fully yours can sit quietly for years before it surfaces.
Trauma and its long-term effects – including the hypervigilance many South Africans carry without realising
Anxiety – chronic, situational, or the kind that has transferred from one context to another
Depression, including the exhausting high-functioning kind that nobody around you can see
Grief and loss – of people, of a version of yourself, of a country
Relationship difficulties – partnership strain, family at a distance, building new friendships in a new place
Identity – the question of who you are when you are no longer in the place that made you
Sessions are 60 minutes via Zoom. We start with a WhatsApp conversation to agree a time that works in your time zone – please mention whether you are in Perth, the eastern states, or New Zealand so I can work out the overlap accurately. Payment is by credit or debit card online, invoiced in ZAR. My current pricing is available here.
Send me a WhatsApp on +27 79 019 8437. Let me know where in Australia or New Zealand you are based — and a sense of what you are looking for. We will find a time that works and take it from there. For more information on Online Counseling, please see that page.
For most Australian clients, yes — comfortably. The sweet spot is South African morning sessions (08:00–10:00 SAST), which land at the end of the afternoon or early evening in the eastern states and at mid-afternoon in Perth. For New Zealand clients, 08:00 SAST is 18:00 NZST. It requires some scheduling intention but it is very workable. We sort this out via WhatsApp before anything is booked.
Absolutely. Many of the things South African emigrants carry do not have a natural expiry date – the anxiety, the complicated feelings about having left, the grief that never quite got processed. The length of time abroad does not make these things smaller. Sometimes it makes them harder to name, which is exactly where counselling is useful.
Both, in the sense that I work with Australian-based South African clients regularly and have a clear picture of what that specific combination involves. I am not Australian and I will not pretend to understand Australian culture from the inside – but that is not what you are coming to me for.
